It was clear to me that believing in myself was a choice, and I chose to do so. I envisioned myself and healing work in a positive light, and the light eliminated through the barriers of scepticism. I’m in this business which may seem strange to some, but I see it as a very personal journey, pertinent to my individuality.

Call it self confidence or self esteem; I believed that I had what it took to make my dream come true…healing. It may not be the most glamorous of occupations, but for me it is a noble calling that has attachments like, loving what I do, making a positive contribution to society and therewithal.

I got inspired by any past mistakes in previous settings, with the resolve: “I will not let that happen again.” In this context any failures can be inspiration for one to do better next time. I learnt more and more about the self, hoping and believing that I would do a better job, a wish that came true.

Word of caution: No one plans to make mistakes in what they do. Accidents or mistakes are pertinent to growth and development. I’m yet to meet an individual who has never got anything wrong, but has got each and every thing right throughout their life!

The words of Lao Tzu, a Chinese philosopher echoed in my mind along the lines of: “Mastering others is strength, however, mastering myself is true power.” One of the inferences I made of that was that knowing myself should be in parallel with believing in myself, for others to believe in me.

It is known that energy follows thought. Focusing on a task elicits energy that flows and is directed to that which you want to flourish. Productive time spent on distractions is similar to money invested in unprofitable ventures; it pays to spend time wisely, in gainful investments.

Focusing is a kind of psychological ability that, if cultivated consistently, momentum is built and the vice of destruction can be tamed. One of the antitheses to distractions is alertness. Focusing on your goals with regularity is helpful in building the momentum needed to ultimately realise the desired goals.

Distractions are like leeches feeding on you, draining you and denying you the time that you could have usefully invested in what you were trying to focus on. My reference to leeches is not to suggest that biodiversity is a bad idea, it is very good indeed. Starving distractions is therefore very necessary in order to feed your focus. A helpful tool to help focus is regular meditation; it aids the ability maintain focus, ignoring any distractions.

Distractions reduce output, compromise quality and can give rise to mediocrity; while, focus fosters excellence. If you can get the best goods and services, why should you settle for average goods and services? You know what is preferable to you and your clients, and I trust that you can ably work towards it. Practice is said to make perfect; no city was built in a day, there is a starting point…like now!

You might have been in your comfort zone at the weekend, rightly so. You deserve the best in both work and pleasure. There is a time and place for particular things in life. A balanced life is usually a happy life; I’m yet to learn of anybody who is averse to happiness.

I start by commending you for the brilliance of your ideas; you are resourceful and adept at your craft. It is a new week, a fresh start and you are bustling with new ideas. The numerous opportunities before you await your decisions. It is another day to make choices. Your intent to make this week better than the previous one, is something that many people would concur with.

If you made some rough decisions last week, yes, that was last week. It is a new dawn. Any situation that presents itself as an obstacle is an opportunity for you to skill yourself in that particular aspect. The hidden positives in a situation can be obscured by the superficial negativity, which is not deep rooted but only apparent. Just unmask the superficiality of the hindrance and the reality of the empty threat is revealed. It is akin to a prank that you should not allot a great measure of seriousness to.

You know what needs a great measure of seriousness, your craft. Now, your ideas are a vehicle on which those that count on you will ride. I trust that it will be a smooth and happy ride, because you believe in yourself and there are those that believe in you. You are both interdependent: they benefit from your professional services; you have a loyal client base. If you are a student, you derive benefit from the learning and facilities at your institution. On the other hand, your high grades can contribute to your institution of learning being held in high esteem.

As a healer, I’m hopeful to having a great start this Monday, and I wish you an equally great start in your field.

Individuals aspire to have a magnificent house and infrastructure in their vicinity, where family and friends can enjoy. Having a solid and wonderful plan that, if implemented in due course, can greatly add to the beauty of the area. Furthermore, a solid foundation reassures you of longevity of your infrastructure. I do not mean to state the obvious, I’m merely appreciative of the work that you have already done, on your road to success, because you have completed the basics. Well done!

Yes, your road to success may still be under construction because of the grandiosity you may want to add to what has been achieved so far. You are keen to get to greater heights, and in doing so, you are inspiring others to take similar courage. Your efforts have got that ripple effect that has warmly touched others in a positive way. Thank you!

You are motivated to have your construction work successfully completed in due course, and to your satisfaction. You really know what you want and how to get it; it is not just completing the work, but in a manner that is preferred to you. Continuing that way will not leave you with any regrets, because you are not rushed, and you want excellence.

At this point in time, you cannot afford to have distractions and time wasting endeavours, because you are focused. Since energy follows thought, you are in position to have thoughts that are helpful in your endeavour, success!

In not a distant future you may look back to where you started and it may seem like it was just yesterday. As often said: “Time flies when you are having fun.” May you continue having fun on your road to success.

Be it academia, business, civil service, charity, whatever you are doing; doing it diligently is a real investment. Your skill base is incrementally helping your cause. Talking of business acumen, you are in a position to make quick decisions with good judgement; decisions that you do not live to regret because they were sound, underpinned by good ration. Your experience speaks volumes and is one to draw knowledge from by those that you mentor or help. You are well positioned to take preventative measures to allay fears, failure or losses; because of your invaluable experience. Inversely, you have a breadth of knowledge regarding any cathartic measures if need be; again, due to your experience.

Textual information that is conflated by external or third parties and presented to you for whatever reason is easily perused by you. Quick and timely sound decisions arrived at for the benefit of your organisation and clients. Overtime, you accumulated a wealth of different types of intelligence: social intelligence, artificial intelligence, business intelligence, political and perhaps, spiritual intelligence. Truly, you are intellectually well equipped to carryout your duties and get ahead in your endeavours.

Your input really matters, yes it does; I can relate to that. I know that in my line of business my input matters. Your input adds value to your service provision; this may seem a subtle reality for some, but it is nonetheless a reality to be acknowledged and celebrated. Your input is value addition which constitutes the different things that you do at the various stages.

You are a force to be reckoned with, do not undermine or underestimate yourself. It is not wise to devalue yourself, because you matter, you are an established change agent; change for the better. You have put yourself, your organisation and clients are in better stead; what a wonderful change agent you are. Thank you. Your input adds value and prognosticates success; just keep it up, because it can only get better.

I believe that one of the valuable attributes of a good chess player is strategy; they are often wonderful strategists. Strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term goal or aim. In life, it can be a helpful thing to have strategies for the aims and goals we have, a kind of master plan of how to get what you want and to where you want. Self-made guiding principles that are followed through, in charting a way forward through the choppy sea of life. In doing so, nasty surprises may not be totally eliminated, but can be greatly reduced to negligible levels.

However, a word of caution is that in doing so, there has to be a healthy amount of strategic ambiguity. Yes, strategic ambiguity in a world of competition in almost everything; from studies to work/business is a helpful tool. I do not mean to be apocalyptic but, the realities of life seem to suggest that perhaps not everybody is charitable towards another. This is where strategic ambiguity can be helpful in protecting you from uncharitable groups and individuals along the way to achieving your goals. Reading and knowing situations and people at a given point in time and place can help to inform you if it is worth being clear or ambiguous.

You know your intentions well, but you may not know or be so sure of other people’s intentions. Make god use of your social intelligence skills. Just because you could be strategically ambiguous as and when necessary, you should maintain consistency regarding you/your organisation’s strategy. When you review situations and see where you have been, where you are at the moment and if your goal is within reach, is how you can tell whether you are making good or slow or no progress. Where re-calibration of particular aspects is necessary, do just that. Additionally, your wellness matters and should be maintained. Furthermore, where other professional expertise can be of help, mine inclusive; you can make your wise choices at your convenience.

The state of being aware of and responding to your surroundings is very worthwhile. However, when this is amplified as in extension of the area covered, this comes with a wealth of valuable insight at your disposal which may not have been privy to. In a world where individuals in institutions of learning, corporate affairs or otherwise, are angling to exhibit excellence in their work, expanded consciousness can be a helpful tool in taking care of one’s affairs.

In work and study, individuals often look to ascend their ranks, assume more responsibilities and reap the financial remuneration attributed to progression. Given the choice between an attractive salary/business returns and a small stipend for the same amount of time and energy expended, I believe that the choice would be obvious for many people. As a healer, expanding my awareness is pertinent to and helps my work.

Expanded awareness comes with the possibility of being more discerning and decisive in matters. A miniature similitude that I can give is that an Advanced Level student of Politics may know that he/she wants to study Politics at university. However, when he/she studies Politics to PhD or Doctor of philosophy level, the knowledge base is comparatively vast in relation to the Advanced Level stage. In work or business, during the period of their apprenticeship, the apprentice is unlikely to be as knowledgeable, skilled and experienced as his/her employer.

Expanded consciousness can lead to transformation of the individual both materially and spiritually, and it can also be cathartic. Allotting a few moments of time with regularity is not asking for too much, given the short, medium and long term benefits to be derived. You may find that you love what you do, you are more innovative or come up with such ideas with ease to better your work or products. Strategic planning may be done with more ease, experientially; it may not be stressful but enjoyable. I believe that expanding one’s consciousness can aid him/her in taking better care of their affairs.

Commonly, our individuality is characterised by wishes, goals and aspirations. I’m yet to meet a person who has no wishes or aspirations whatsoever. More often than not, the individual has an intended life or business trajectory that he/she would like to follow through. However, for best results, the minute specifics in the course of the said trajectory/life plan may need some refining and polishing. My reference to refining and polishing is that at times, little or no attention is paid to the possibility of the hurdles, twists and turns as in time and space.

Tempestuous moments are not in all situations but a mere possibility in some, and should not be overlooked when we are deeply immersed in harmonics. Yes, having contingency plans or measures are a clever thing to do; paying attention to those ‘blind spots’ and ‘dips’. Crop farmers like having rain on a regular basis because of the benefits derived therefrom. However they are also mindful of the possibility of thunder and lightning, and their ancillary effects. Buildings have lightening rods or lightening conductors that interface with the earth in the event of lightening; that is a contingency measure.

Please do not allow your mind to harbour pessimism, no. Your plan/project is work in progress, do not cease to plan until your goals are realised. Additionally, you are not obliged to lay open your ‘pack of cards’ for others to evaluate. You are a good strategist and optimist, who is also realistic; this helps the feasibility and viability of your plans. You are a good leader who takes steps to be risk averse or, at least safety measures for potential risk which may not always translate into actual risk.

You are the mastermind of your projects, you know what to do as and when the need arises, including the professional input you can enlist, mine inclusive, if you so wish. The excitement that comes with success in a particular field, business or project is euphoric, a well deserved feeling.

Discomfort, spaciness, indecision, lethargy, therewithal are turbulent states that none of us would like to be trapped in. Instinctively, one would seek to extricate him/ herself from repugnant states or situations.

One would prefer to walk gracefully in what some individuals perceive as the ‘battlefield of life’. We are purposeful individuals and not strangers to the realism of angling for betterment of the self. Wellness and vitality are armours that we cannot afford to willingly dispense of, due to the catastrophic resultant effects of not having those layers of protection.

Betterment of the self seems like a mantle that we inherited from our forebears, which must be passed on. It is therefore unlikely that posterity will be objectionable to this premise, in their attempts to avert adversity in the continuum of challenges.

I do not suggest that you assume some sort of grandiosity, no. Advisedly, I would say that it is more helpful to have a sense of realism and optimism. I think that in doing so, you will be in better stead to make decisions and take actions that are effective and transformative. You will more ably sift facts from fictitious material, sieving through things that need delineation.

As a certified healer and herbalist, among other things, I could be that missing component that you could enlist to contribute to redemption from particular situations. My work as a healer is not a denial of ‘reality’, but rather a broader sense of reality from a spiritual perspective. A type of treatment that is helpful and beneficial.

Relief from adverse states often comes with a sense of renewal, that makes one feel that he/she is better equipped to go ahead to do the things that they want to do without hindrance.

Enhance your ability to ascend economically by making use of the opportunities that present themselves, you are a resourceful individual. Indifference in meeting your PSDGs should not be an option, because you really need to make a difference by being different from what you were. I exhort you to gravitate towards ascension not descent.

Ensure food security by eating nutritious meals on time. The energy you expend going about your business needs to be replenished with regularity and on time. It would not be feasible for a car driver whose fuel tank reads ¼ and he/she thinks that the fuel can do 300 miles (482.8 kilometres)!

Ensure that your health and wellbeing are not compromised in order to maintain long term constancy in achieving your aims and goals, and happily enjoying the rewards of your work. Take good care of your physical and spiritual needs; the body, mind and spirit approach. Some needs can be met by tangible empirical remedies, while other needs are met by metaphysical ones or, a fusion of both for a holistic approach to problem solving. I hasten to add that this is where David Lodda the healer comes in.

Do decent work or business; do what you like and like what you do to maximise quality, productivity, longevity and fulfilment. When you like what you do, it is more likely than not that you give your work that extra tender loving care (TLC). Additionally, it is also likely that you will come across and be perceived by others as a self-starter. In terms of time as in space, one who likes what he/she does is more likely to last in that occupation for a long duration.

Have an inclusive service provision; by inclusive I mean that the services you provide should be open to all those who can benefit from them. People in need of your services and who can access them should be warmly welcomed.

Make sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems; enjoy the best herbs and herbal teas from sources with ethical harvesting methods. Methods that do not facilitate environmental degradation, but foster sustainable development

This list of personal sustainable development goals is not exhaustive and can be added to.